Searching and replacing text

When working with text elements containing a large body of text, you might need to search for a specific text string. You might also need to replace a specific string of text with an alternative string.

The Find and Replace feature allows you to search for (and replace) any string of text in a text element. The feature also includes a powerful regular expression search. For example, the following regular expression can be used to find all e-mail addresses in a text element:

^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$

To search text in a text module

Open the text module in the text editor.
To open the Find and Replace dialog, press the Edit drop-down list in the text editor menu and choose Find and Replace.

Alternatively, you can place the cursor inside the text module and press Ctrl+F.
Enter the text to search in the Find text box and press Find.

The search text is highlighted in the text module.
To search for the next instance of the text, press Find again.

If you continue to press the Find button, the search continues down the page. After the last instance of the text is found, the message Reached end of file indicates that no more search results were found.

However, if no instance of the search text is found in the text module, the message displayed is: Match not Found.
If you press Find again, the search continues at the top of the page.

Search Options:

Case sensitive: The search will only return results with the same case.
Whole word: Search only for whole words.
Note: If you enter any special characters in the Find text box, the Whole Word option is disabled.
Regular expressions: Search using regular expressions. For example, the following regular expression searches for e-mail addresses in a text module:
[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}

To search and replace text in a text module

Open the text module in the text editor.
Open the Find and Replace dialog.
Enter the text to search in the Find text box and the text to replace the find text with and press Replace.
If the search text is found, the text is replaced by the Replace text.

If another instance of the search text is found, that instance is highlighted in the text module. If you press Replace again, the highlighted instance is replaced and the cursor moves forward, if a third instance is found.

If another instance is not found, the cursor stops at the last replaced instance.
If you press Find again, the search continues at the top of the page.

Use the Replace All option to replace all the instances of a text in the text module. When you do this, the number of replacements is displayed as a message in the Find and Replace dialog.